Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Pixel Judge preview

PJ: "Chocobos, Moogles, Crystals, jobs, Dragoons, Bahamut, Cid... I could probably go on with this forever. Being one of the longest and most notable game series out there, Final Fantasy engraved all these words deep into the hearts of so many players. Now, the release of a remade 14th instalment is drawing near, making everybody unsure whether Square Enix will be able to change the rather negative reputation of the online FFs."

[Shad0wRunner]

I was in Phase 3 Beta on PS3. I loved it. It's very addictive, as you would expect from an MMO. Im gonna buy this game on PS3 and again when it releases on PS4, next year. If I had to pick just one game to keep me busy for hours upon hours on end...it would be FFXIV. Now I sit impatiently, waiting for the open Beta. ^_^

[araman]

They might as well have named this game "Final Fantasy Fanservice Reborn", because that's basically what it is... and I love it.

[Jyndal]

I always heard the most negative hype on this game. What's different now that makes it worthwhile?

I'm asking because an "review" can carry a certain bias, but a player will usually give an accurate account.

[NioRide]

I never played the original 14.
But I did drop around 100 hours on the beta.

The game just feels spot on, the controls are nice, personally the combat speed is perfect, its not overly active or fast and grows more complex as you level. the boss fights were fun to learn, and the dungeons were fantastic in design.

The longer I played the more I wanted to play.

Ended up level 30 GLA, with 15-19 in like 4 crafts and 2 gatherings.

[ScubbaSteve]

The original game was poorly designed, it was hard to buy and sell items to other players. The UI was laggy making simple inventory management a nightmare. The area maps were copy/paste blocks that you'd expect from an amateur with a stock map editor. The combat was uninspired and the battle animations looked lame, seriously go check out the originals ancient magic. Spells like flood looked more like drip.

Now what ARR has done is nothing real special. It has kept all the models from the original game. Armor, monsters, and various things are reused. The maps are new and assets do not stick out when they're reused. The game engine is better and there's less lag. I haven't been able to check out how they plan to work the auction house so I can't say if that was fixed but it'd be pretty dumb if it hasn't.

The state the game is in now is very similar to what you'd find in any mmo that's been released in the last 5 years, most similar to Rift, except it looks really good and it's very polished. It's obvious after the first one failed they didn't want to try to reinvent the wheel, they just wanted to deliver a playable game.

What will make this game fun or not is the community and you'll see where that's going 3 months after the launch. Till then if you want the mmo flavor of the month then this might be worth looking into.